Dear Brother, “Leader” of LulzSec

This is a guest post stolen wholesale from Pastebin, where Ryan Ackroyd aka Kayla posted it on December 20th. It has made the rounds of social media over the weekend and is an incendiary, no-holds-barred calling-out of Hector Xavier Monsegur aka Sabu by one of his old crewmates. Ackroyd is now free on controlled release after 10 months in prison of a 30-month sentence, all courtesy his old pal Sabu. For a good backgrounder of LulzSec, see this Guardian post.

Dear my “brother” Sabu.

Greetings from the real world. You know, where cause and consequence reign free and mighty. I’ll send you a postcard sometime. Anyway… How is being a human bidet for the FBI treating you? The very people you taught the young and impressionable to hate. I heard you now have a job as a security consultant? That sounds fun. Life is looking pretty cosy for you currently. Hey, talking of cosy; It’s Jeremy Hammond’s birthday soon, January the 8th. I was considering sending him book or something because, from experience, jail isn’t too cosy and he could do with things to do to pass the time. After all, 10 years is a hell of a stint for jail, paedophiles and rapists get less.

Do you remember Jeremy at all? He’s one of the people you set up and sold out to save yourself. But enough about Jeremy, let’s talk about you Hector. I can tell you love talking about good old Sabu lately after all.

I must admit that after the initial sting at the realization of what you did over our time spent communicating, I haven’t thought about you much. I feel a strong sense of injustice over what happened and the way things went, but as a general rule it’s a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. But then you started popping up on my time line – ‘Sabu has attended VICE as a VIP.’ ‘ Sabu is doing an interview for CBS news.’ ‘Sabu speaks about his days of hacking for CNET.’ You get the point.

So I watch, and I have to be honest, even though you did what you did I was still kind of half expecting a show of remorse or even an acceptance for what you did. Something, anything. But it was like wishing from blood from a stone. You tried to rationalize what you did and you outright lied. You flaunt yourself on TV making yourself out to be some kind of modern day hero, asking who will guard the guards and various other bullshit. Let’s not forget Hector, we had to endure your bullshit for a long time and we know exactly what you are.

Remember the time Jake and Mustafa wanted to walk away? You knew Jake was young as you had spoken to him numerous times via voice chat. It was too much and they didn’t want to be a part of it any more. But Big-Bad Sabu came out and you raged at them in IRC. I asked you to back off them but you wouldn’t, and so Jake and Mustafa stayed around longer than they wanted and got deeper than they had ever intended. You actively pulled children back into a world of crime to continue something they didn’t even want to do. You are a bully and a criminal and the only person who was caught who hasn’t paid a sufficient price for what you did. You were the worst of all of us. The knowledge you lacked in technical ability you made up for in manipulation and a big loud mouth with the ability to coax people into doing things. Using your online persona and charismatic ways to adjust peoples view on things to what you were trying to spin at the time. Pure peer pressure. Nobody, especially the children you dragged in, could say no to you or you would attempt to scare them.

You were caught but instead of taking responsibility, you bent over and let the FBI take turns at riding you out. “Mastermind” (I laugh every time.) you are not, but a manipulating conductor of targets and (admittedly) persuasive and entirely convincing social engineer you are.

Jeremy and I were mostly happy exploring and reporting exploits if you remember correctly. Sure, we had some lulz along the way, but who’s idea was it to go for big targets for pure self gain? Credit cards, the dumping of personal information, ruining of lives. This was all on the Great Sabu. Is this what masterminding a group is? Just telling people to be bigger shits than they need to be on the Internet but doing non of it himself? Backing people into corners and claiming you had a hand in any of it other than setting people up to do your dirty work.

The only thing you masterminded was your own freedom by coercing and manipulating Jeremy and I into doing things you couldn’t do. You manufactured these scenarios and targets to make us look like bigger threats than we ever were or would have been without your constant pushing. Yes, we were able to do these things, but we had no intention of doing so without you orchestrating a few targets and spinning some crap reasons of why. Constantly giving us speeches of why we should do these things and using our weakness of wanting to spread concerns about security against us. You wanted us to flex our abilities in front of you so you could log it and go crying back to the FBI in order for them to fear us more than they feared you; you turned what we were doing into something much more sinister so that they thought that apprehending us was more in their interests than putting you in jail. All so you could go back home and take selfies of yourself for the media.

If the authorities have anything to fear, it isn’t our skills (although, people should fix their shit. Seriously. For every ones sake.) it’s people like you who run their mouth and rile the impressionable up to a point of anger, using your charismatic way of exciting people into a false sense of revolution. Whilst all you care about is yourself and your ulterior motives. We were interested in the way things work and our want and our need to learn and penetrate so-called secure systems clouded our judgement of your real intentions.

I take full responsibility for what I have done. I’ve served my time in jail, I was tagged, I’m on probation, I have restrictions that hinder my general progress towards a career but I have accepted the punishment – so if you think that this is me trying to offshoot any blame, then don’t. I know what I’ve done. I actually feel most shame for some of the things I said to people along the way and lives I effected more than anything. But you have taken exactly ZERO responsibility for any of this.

So who are you Hector? ‘Legendary hacker’ ? ‘leader of anonymous and Lulzsec’ ? You would have functioned better as a cult leader. Pushing, pressuring and preying on younger and smarter people than yourself and running them into the ground. If all you did was relay information for the FBI and steal credit card details (which you didn’t even do. You got us to do it for you.) then what is your purpose anyway?

Since most of the words you spun us were under influence of the FBI you couldn’t have meant any of it considering you were just trying to get us to do things to report. You don’t care about movements or activism or rights, because you try sell out anybody who does. You know a few good tricks but as a general rule your hacking know-how is quite limited. So who are you Hector Xavier Monsegur and why are you on TV? Because I spent quite a while getting to know you, and all I see is a coward and a fraud.

“I would stay away from anonymous” says @ANONYMOUSabu who riled up thousands to hate authorities and even tried to incite violence towards them.

“It was too much publicity” says the person whose main focus was to talk shit on twitter.

“They knew my weakness was my kids” says the man who I continuously warned to back away from all of this and never come back, for your kids’ sake. I tried to protect those kids way before you even tried to use them as a reason for saving yourself and betraying your friends. I wouldn’t blame you for choosing your children over your friends if it saved them from going into the system, any sane person would – but I do blame you for putting crime before your children in the first place. It should have never come down to that decision to begin with and you know I told you this countless times. Spinning your kids as a reason for being a coward is idiotic and false and makes you look desperate to try rationalize what you did.

“Helped intercept attacks and share them with the government” – attacks that YOU initially thought up, so you didn’t prevent anything, you just suggested something and when we spoke about it you relayed what information we gathered and you put an end to it and avoided nearly 30 years in prison? Wow. You certainly are an American hero, a (what was it you said?) “inspiration” to people. I, for one, can’t wait to teach my children to set my friends up and help the FBI entrap. A true role model to all.

“It wasn’t a situation where I identified anybody. I didn’t point my fingers at anybody.” – I’ll let the FBI handle this one:

“Monsegur also provided crucial and detailed information about the formation, organization, hierarchy and membership of these hacking groups, as well as specific information about their planning and execution of many major cyber attacks, including the specific roles of his co-conspirators in committing those crimes.”

“Monsegur assists law enforcement in identifying and locating lulzsec members and affiliates. In addition to this crucial historical information, Monsegur proactively cooperated with ongoing Government investigations. Working sometimes literally around the clock, at the direction of the law enforcement. Monsegur engages his co-conspirators in online chats and were critical to confirming their identities and whereabouts.”

So the FBI were wrong? In that case surely you can go join Jeremy in jail as because snitching on your ‘brothers’ is the only reason you’re at home eating doughnuts right now.

I won’t babble on any more because but I will ask you, respectfully, to stop talking so much shit and own up to something (preferably something that you actually did and not somebody else. Claiming responsibility to make yourself looked more skilled than you are is just strange Hector.) You’re on TV giggling like a little school girl about how you used to hack free AOL Internet as a child as Jeremy’s talent rots away in jail by your hand.

Oh, before I forget and obviously completely unrelated – what is the legal age of sexual consent over there? 18? How old did you think I was? 16? You weren’t the only one who kept logs Hector.
Be a decent human for once in your life and find that hole to crawl back into instead of rubbing what you did in peoples faces.

I think I know him it is even worse than you said he is empty. Hurting kids is nothing to him money and what it can buy is what counts he is old now but won’t die that kind never does. He was the hacker that was his favorite-and spying a sneaky little duck. oh yeah he loved scaring kids women he is a sex offender. I don’t know if you know that. He hurt you me so many kids wish the fbi made sure he never hurt another one but they didnt

Donna is right. He is a sex offender, a child molester. He was kicked off submarines in 1981 for molesting a 2yr old. Then General Dynamics EB Ct hires him. This is the shittiest security. He is a born snitch and has been diagnosed bipolar but won’t take meds and sociopathic. Perfect RAT. This is the best the feds can get for an agent? It was all about the money and he and partner scammed millions. Corruption Feds Money Cybercrime

WOW! you are known! Born with a silver spoon, mama’s precious boy. Yes you are a diagnosed sociopath and child molester of very young kids. You are the smartest guy in the room, little old rich man. You are 67 now. think you can leave kids alone? Nope, not you, not ever. They are the victims, so many victims. Of course all the identities you stold and millions you defrauded. It was all about power, manipulation, control, greed and RAGE. Sound familiar? Being a snitch was never a surprise. You are a coward and incapable of doing 20 minutes in jail. Mama’s fair haired boy, in prison? Not ever. We know you, coward. Never a physical fight in your entire life, not even on the playground as a kid. To be so scared, yet to hurt those smaller, younger, weaker than you. Sociopath and coward that you are, but you hide old man. You are well hidden-and you are scared.